"A tree that is cultivated and guarded through the care of its owner produces its fruit at the expected time.
"

St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church

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"God has no need of men."

St Philip Neri

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"What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. "

Ch 2. On loving God. How much God
deserves love from man in recognition of His gifts,
both material and spiritual: and how these gifts
should be cherished without neglect of the Giver.

Those who admit the truth of what I have said know,
I am sure, why we are bound to love God. But if
unbelievers will not grant it, their ingratitude is
at once confounded by His innumerable benefits,
lavished on our race, and plainly discerned by the
senses. Who is it that gives food to all flesh,
light to every eye, air to all that breathe? It
would be foolish to begin a catalogue, since I have
just called them innumerable: but I name, as notable
instances, food, sunlight and air; not because they
are God's best gifts, but because they are essential
to bodily life.

Man must seek in his own higher nature for the
highest gifts; and these are dignity, wisdom and
virtue. By dignity I mean free-will, whereby he not
only excels all other earthly creatures, but has
dominion over them. Wisdom is the power whereby he
recognizes this dignity, and perceives also that it
is no accomplishment of his own. And virtue impels
man to seek eagerly for Him who is man's Source, and
to lay fast hold on Him when He has been found.

Now, these three best gifts have each a twofold
character. Dignity appears not only as the
prerogative of human nature, but also as the cause
of that fear and dread of man which is upon every
beast of the earth. Wisdom perceives this
distinction, but owns that though in us, it is, like
all good qualities, not of us. And lastly, virtue
moves us to search eagerly for an Author, and, when
we have found Him, teaches us to cling to Him yet
more eagerly. Consider too that dignity without
wisdom is nothing worth; and wisdom is harmful
without virtue, as this argument following shows:
There is no glory in having a gift without knowing
it. But to know only that you have it, without
knowing that it is not of yourself that you have it,
means self-glorying, but no true glory in God.

And
so the apostle says to men in such cases, 'What hast
thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst
receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not
received it? (I Cor. 4.7). He asks, Why dost thou
glory? but goes on, as if thou hadst not received
it, showing that the guilt is not in glorying over a
possession, but in glorying as though it had not
been received. And rightly such glorying is called
vain-glory, since it has not the solid foundation of
truth. The apostle shows how to discern the true
glory from the false, when he says, He that glorieth,
let him glory in the Lord, that is, in the Truth,
since our Lord is Truth (I Cor. 1.31; John 14.6).

We must know, then, what we are, and that it is
not of ourselves that we are what we are. Unless we
know this thoroughly, either we shall not glory at
all, or our glorying will be vain. Finally, it is
written, 'If thou know not, go thy way forth by the
footsteps of the flock' (Cant. 1.8). And this is
right. For man, being in honor, if he know not his
own honor, may fitly be compared, because of such
ignorance, to the beasts that perish. Not knowing
himself as the creature that is distinguished from
the irrational brutes by the possession of reason,
he commences to be confounded with them because,
ignorant of his own true glory which is within, he
is led captive by his curiosity, and concerns
himself with external, sensual things. So he is made
to resemble the lower orders by not knowing that he
has been more highly endowed than they.

We must be on our guard against this ignorance.
We must not rank ourselves too low; and with still
greater care we must see that we do not think of
ourselves more highly than we ought to think, as
happens when we foolishly impute to ourselves
whatever good may be in us. But far more than either
of these kinds of ignorance, we must hate and shun
that presumption which would lead us to glory in
goods not our own, knowing that they are not of
ourselves but of God, and yet not fearing to rob God
of the honor due unto Him.

For mere ignorance, as in the first instance,
does not glory at all; and mere wisdom, as in the
second, while it has a kind of glory, yet does not
glory in the Lord. In the third evil case, however,
man sins not in ignorance but deliberately, usurping
the glory which belongs to God. And this arrogance
is a more grievous and deadly fault than the
ignorance of the second, since it contemns God,
while the other knows Him not. Ignorance is brutal,
arrogance is devilish. Pride only, the chief of all
iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were
rightful attributes of our nature, and, while
receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due
glory.

Wherefore to dignity and wisdom we must add
virtue, the proper fruit of them both. Virtue seeks
and finds Him who is the Author and Giver of all
good, and who must be in all things glorified;
otherwise, one who knows what is right yet fails to
perform it, will be beaten with many stripes (Luke
12.47). Why? you may ask. Because he has failed to
put his knowledge to good effect, but rather has
imagined mischief upon his bed (Ps. 36.4); like a
wicked servant, he has turned aside to seize the
glory which, his own knowledge assured him, belonged
only to his good Lord and Master. It is plain,
therefore, that dignity without wisdom is useless
and that wisdom without virtue is accursed. But when
one possesses virtue, then wisdom and dignity are
not dangerous but blessed. Such a man calls on God
and lauds Him, confessing from a full heart, 'Not
unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give
glory' (Ps. 115.1). Which is to say, 'O Lord, we
claim no knowledge, no distinction for ourselves;
all is Thine, since from Thee all things do come.'

But we have digressed too far in the wish to
prove that even those who know not Christ are
sufficiently admonished by the natural law, and by
their own endowments of soul and body, to love God
for God's own sake. To sum up: what infidel does not
know that he has received light, air, food--all
things necessary for his own body's life--from Him
alone who giveth food to all flesh (Ps. 136.25), who
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust
(Matt. 5.45). Who is so impious as to attribute the
peculiar eminence of humanity to any other except to
Him who saith, in Genesis, 'Let us make man in Our
image, after Our likeness'? (Gen. 1.26). Who else
could be the Bestower of wisdom, but He that
teacheth man knowledge? (Ps. 94.10). Who else could
bestow virtue except the Lord of virtue?

Therefore even the infidel who knows not Christ
but does at least know himself, is bound to love God
for God's own sake. He is unpardonable if he does
not love the Lord his God with all his heart, and
with all his soul, and with all his mind; for his
own innate justice and common sense cry out from
within that he is bound wholly to love God, from
whom he has received all things. But it is hard, nay
rather, impossible, for a man by his own strength or
in the power of free-will to render all things to
God from whom they came, without rather turning them
aside, each to his own account, even as it is
written, 'For all seek their own' (Phil. 2.21); and
again, 'The imagination of man's heart is evil from
his youth' (Gen. 8.21).